Stranger Things: Apparitions & Visionaries

Returning home from the City of Shrone on May Day I inadvertently passed two Marian grottoes and of course had to stop. Travelling around Ireland you may notice an abundance of grottoes! Some are discrete and tucked into gateposts or placed in gardens: private, household shrines.

But the vast majority are Marian shrines depicting the miraculous events that took place in Lourdes in 1858. Between February 11th and July 16th the BVM appeared to 14 year old Bernadette Soubirous, revealing her identity with the words I am the Immaculate Conception. A spring simultaneously gushed forth, its water later believed to hold miraculous cures. A large church was eventually built near the grotto which quickly attracted thousands of pilgrims from around the world. Imitation grottoes were built and during the Marian Year of 1954 numerous grottoes were erected in Ireland and many remain in towns and villages throughout the country.

Valentia Island even boasts a grotto in a slate quarry.

All follow a similar pattern showing the BVM raised up high in a small cave-like structure, Bernadette praying below her. There is often a stream flowing down the side of the structure referring to the original healing spring. Ballinadee has gone for an unusual arrangement with its heart-shaped enclosure.

However, the two grottoes I encountered pre-date the Marian Year and have their own particular stories to tell.

Lourdes Grotto, Rossmore, Inchigeela

Tucked off the R565 a discrete signpost notifies the presence of Rossmore Grotto near Inchigeela, West Cork. It has a large and impressive car park suggesting crowds. Like most Marian grottoes it is built into a hillside with a statue of the BVM raised on high, in this case approached by a series of stone steps. Below her St Bernadette (she was canonised in 1933) gazes up in adoration.

What struck me was the abundance of the water. Between the two figures, a stream gushes downwards, signifying the original miraculous stream that sprung up at Lourdes. Pilgrims can cross the stream via a stone bridge and make their way to the statue.

There also seems to be a small well, a cup at the ready.

An elderly, very smartly dressed woman was in the stream collecting water. She had come all the way from Limerick to do so and came every year on May Day. She told me that she would sprinkle the water in her home and use it when she was praying. She said the water was exceptionally good. Later, she explained, she would be going on to the religious house. Initially I didn’t understand the significance of our conversation – more of that shortly.

Like many Marian shrines, the area is protected by railings, the patron proudly proclaimed in large lettering painted a traditional BVM blue.

Two miles east of Rossmore, passing through Inchigeela and heading out towards Dunmanway, another grotto was encountered.

Lourdes Grotto, Gortaneadin, Inchigeela

This grotto was erected in 1969 by the McCarthy family in memory of their daughter who had died a few years earlier. It is on the side of the road, fenced off with lettering, again painted in BVM blue, requesting: Our Lady Of Lourdes Pray for Us.

A statue of Our Lady is perched up high on the rocks, a crucifixion to her left. St Bernadette gazes up from below, a stream running down between them.

Wooden palings block entry to the sacred space within which are covered in offerings: rosaries, medals and a selection of sunglasses.

Flowers add colour – plastic as well as fresh ones.

The enclosure has a wonderfully dilapidated pilgrims’ shelter, a couple of rickety rows of benches offering some protection from the weather. The interior is full of votives, some very poignant.

As at Rossmore, a stream runs down the centre of the grotto.

The water was only a trickle when I visited but a pool had collected in a rocky basin, cold and clear.

Moving statues

What connects the two sites, however, is something very unusual – at each the statue of Our Lady is said to have been seen to move, to take on a visibly human presence. She also gave messages to those who witnessed this. This was part of an extraordinary phenomenon beginning in 1985 when over 30 sites around Ireland reported seeing statues of the BVM move or take on a human likeness. The first sighting was on the 24th April in the tiny village of Asdee in North Kerry (the well there already visited) where a seven year old girl preparing for her First Communion saw a statue of the Sacred Heart crook a finger, and another of the BVM open her mouth. 36 children in the same school, and some of the parents, later confirmed they had seen something similar. In July 1985, it was claimed that a roadside statue of the BVM in Ballinspittle County Cork had moved spontaneously.

Huge crowds came to see for themselves and on the 15th August, 1985 over 20,000 pilgrims were reported to have visited. According to Fintan O Toole in his book We Don’t Know Ourselves, an astonishing 80% of overall visitors reported seeing the statue move at some point.

Similar occurrences were reported around the country including Mount Melleray, Co Waterford, and Culleens, Sligo where four teenage girls described seeing a life size vision of the BVM floating above them.

On August 5th 1985 the phenomenon was noted at Gortaneadin. Two young girls, Rosemary O’Sullivan and Marie Vaughan, aged ten and eleven, visited the grotto to say prayers. As they knelt at the kneeler, the girls reported that the statue had changed before their eyes into a human-like figure of a young woman. When they visited a second time the apparition gave them a simple message: peace. Others were attracted to the site and reported similar experiences. Though the crowds were never as huge as at Ballinspittle, hundreds of people visited Inchigeela to see for themselves.

The story at Rossmore is slightly different. Fiona Tierney, who had been taken to Gortaneadin grotto by her aunt, received her first vision at Rossmore on the 24th April 1986 and she continued to witness regular apparitions until 1997.

During one vision the BVM blessed each step leading up to the statue, and on another occasion was seen to walk on the water, encouraging people to drink from the stream and to use the water to heal the sick. Some of the messages Fiona received are outlined on a sign on the site.

Fiona became regarded as a visionary and devoted her life to following the numerous and frequent messages she continued to receive from the BVM. One request was that she found religious houses. Fiona and her husband bought an old farmhouse in Doon, Limerick which became the Immaculate Heart House of Prayer, the centre of a religious organisation named The Servants of the Way of the Immaculate Conception. Another house of prayer was founded in Inchigeela known as St Joseph’s and this is where the lady collecting the water comes into it. She had travelled from the house in Doon and was heading to St Joseph’s. No wonder she had such faith in the water:

Our Lady said that her son Jesus had blessed the water in the stream, She said: ‘drink from it and take it home to the sick.’

So what was going on? I have only scratched the surface but it seems the mid 1980s were particularly tough years for Ireland recently rocked by the Kerry Babies horror, and then by the Air India disaster. It was also a time of economic depression, high unemployment and mass emigration. Did people see what they needed to see? There are several theses available online which explore these questions in depth, tentatively offering their own psychological explanations. Many newspaper articles are also available on the subject, as well as videos, this one taking Ballinspittle as its focus.

Andrew Nuding’s photographic thesis of apparition sites is sympathetic and poignant.

What has to be clearly stated though is that most people who witnessed the apparitions firmly believe they saw something extraordinary and nearly 40 years later remain unwavering in their beliefs.

So somewhat sidetracked by apparitions, odd encounters and the complexity of belief, a final strange and only slightly connected story. The priest at Asdee where it had all started, Father Ferris, was a colourful and eccentric figure. He believed that the family of Jesse James, the American outlaw, were originally from Asdee and wrote:

The Jameses were Protestants. A servant girl of theirs was going blind and she went to the holy well. She made a round there and got her sight. At the same time her master had a horse gone blind. He took it to the holy well and marched it around several times. The horse got its sight but James, it owners, got blind.

Quoted by Fintan O Toole, We Don’t Know Ourselves

Stranger things indeed.

The location of the grottoes can be found in the Gazetteer.